Abstract Rationale Effective communication between family caregivers and healthcare professionals is vital for family-centered critical care. In ICU settings, complex patient conditions and unfamiliar environment often cause psychological distress in family caregivers, hindering their communication with health care team. This study aimed to (1) compare family caregivers’ perceived communication quality with the healthcare team between Medical and Surgical ICUs and (2) examine the associations among perceived communication quality, anxiety, depressive symptoms, and digital literacy by ICU type. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional survey of family caregivers recruited from five adult ICUs (medical, surgical, neurosurgical, oncology, and coronary) at a tertiary academic medical center in South Korea. Communication quality with healthcare professionals was assessed using the Family Inpatient Communication Survey (FICS, 30 items). Participants also completed the Patient Health Questionnaire-2 (PHQ-2, 2 items), Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7, 7 items), and Everyday Digital Literacy Questionnaire (EDLQ, 22 items). ICUs were grouped as medical (medical, oncology, coronary) or surgical (surgical, neurosurgical) ICU. Descriptive statistics and correlation analyses were used to compare communication quality and its associations with other variables by ICU type. Results A total of 156 family caregivers participated in the study (mean age=48.24±11.86 years; 69.9% women). Most caregivers were either patient’s spouse (n = 50, 32.1%) or adult child (n = 71, 45.5%) of the patient, and identified themselves as the primary decision-maker (n = 122, 78.2%) There was no statistically significant difference in caregivers’ sociodemographic characteristics or scores of FICS-information, FICS-emotion, PHQ-2, GAD-7 and EDLQ across ICU types (Table 1). Among caregivers in surgical ICUs (n = 69), higher informational and emotional communication score was significantly associated with lower anxiety and better digital literacy (p 0.05), whereas no significant correlations were found among these variables in caregivers from medical ICUs. Conclusions In our sample, family caregivers’ perceptions of communication quality did not differ significantly between medical and surgical ICUs. However, in surgical ICUs, better perceived communication was linked to lower anxiety and higher digital literacy. These findings suggest the potential value of digital literacy in supporting communication experiences and reducing distress among caregivers. Further research with larger and more diverse samples is needed to validate these associations. This abstract is funded by: Yonsei University College of Nursing Mo-Im Kim Nursing Research Institute
Choi et al. (Fri,) studied this question.